“Below, the papers had arrived.  They gave the details of another and decisive battle. That, and an expedition during the morning to a neighboring Roman encampment, banished the horsemen of the preceding night, nor did they recur till I found myself in my room, exhausted and bent down with pain, at eleven.  The fact was I had played the fool and overwalked myself, and my avenger, the bullet, began to remind me of his presence in my system.  For three mortal hours no poor wretch, save in his death struggle, endured greater agony than I did.  At last, a ’compassion that never faileth,’ bestowed on me an interval of ease, and I slept.  Heavily, I imagine, since for some time a strange booming noise droned continuously in my ears before it waked me.  At last I was roused.  I listened.  The sound was like nothing I had ever heard before.  It seemed as if a heavy-sledge hammer, or huge wooden mallet, carefully muffled in wadding, was at work in the room below me.  The stable clock struck four.  ‘No mason,’ thought I, ’no mason would commence his day’s work at four in the morning.  Burglars, perhaps,’ and I resolved to give alarm.  The noise suddenly ceased, and some three minutes afterward as suddenly recommenced in the children’s play-room immediately above me.  ’Be they whom they may they shall be disturbed.’  And I began to dress in the dark with all possible expedition.  Some partial progress was made when the noise ceased in the upper room and descended forthwith to my own.  An instant afterward it seemed to proceed from the library.  In about twenty minutes it ceased altogether.

“‘No mason, no burglar,’ was my conclusion.  ’This noise has nothing in common with either the one or the other.  Did my old guide speak accurately when he called this “The House of Mystery?” Whether it be such or no, it is not the house for me.  I can’t sleep in it.  I must flit; and I will do so with the morning’s light.’

“But with the morning’s light came bright and cheerful faces, kindly inquiries, and renewed hospitality, and with them an abandonment of my menaced departure.  During the day an opportunity presented itself of mentioning to my young host the harassing disturbances of the night, and asking for an explanation.

“‘I can give none,’ was his reply:  ’after many years residence in the house, and ceaseless endeavors to ascertain the cause of these annoyances, you are as much au fait of their origin as myself.’

“‘Is their[sic] no motive, adequate or inadequate,’ I continued, ’which can be assigned for these nightly visitations?’

“’None beyond the tradition—­apparently authentic—­that an ancestor of ours, a man whose character will not bear investigation, met his death, unfairly, in an old house on the site of which this is built.  He was a miser, and presumed to be extremely wealthy.  He lived secluded from society; his factotum and agent being an Italian valet, who was perfectly aware of the ample means of his